In the presence of stones

The stones were
assembled in a loose circle of five, each as huge as a beach house,
verdant layers of moss covering them like furs draped from
kings’ shoulders. I’d come through the forest quickly,
following the meandering logic of a deer trail. When I rounded the
a sharp corner, rising from the dry gully I’d dipped into,
the stones were less than 20 paces away, resting before me with the
candor and natural equipoise of wild animals.

In years
past, I’d come upon such specimens in ones and twos –
erratics, as they are called, boulders once sledded and deposited
by glaciers. This tight grouping of five was unusual, however, as
if I had stumbled into a secret meeting, a convocation of elders.

As I walked the perimeter, I reached out to touch their
soft mosses and rough sides; it was if I were attempting to read an
early form of Braille. Elephantine gray, the stones were heavily
decorated with a black, green, red and yellow confusion of lichens.
A species of granite, the stones showed veins of quartz running
through them like rivers or strikes of white lightening.

Every culture, I know, has its sacred sites, grottoes set aside for
meditation or prayer, mountains not to be climbed. An individual
needs this, too. In that moment, I knew I’d come face to face
with the divine, with the innate, singular art of simply being.

As a boy growing up, I collected any number of places
that were special to me -- a maple branch thick as a whiskey barrel
overhanging a neighborhood brook, a secret hideout of leaves and
mud where my best friend and I played. As with all children, I
never thought of nature as being separate from me. More accurately,
I probably never thought of nature at all. Rather, it was always
there, like now, at the ends of my fingers. Neither did I imbue my
private haunts with healing qualities, regard them as sanctuaries
or define them as special places of sanity, though thinking back,
that’s what they were.

And once again, I had
discovered one, and moved to stand in its center. I walked from
stone to stone, touching each one, introducing myself through a
stillness of mind. There was no doubt they occupied the forest the
way people of greatness occupy a room. The boulders loomed. It
wasn’t their size, I decided, nor the weight they brought to
bear on the land, but the fact of their longevity. They’d
occupied that spot through dozens or more generations of trees.
Moonlit centuries clung to their sides, Birdsong, I thought,
dwelled within them. Standing within their circle, I knew my time
on earth was nothing compared to their solidity.

We have
so few places of refuge these days. In the center of the ring,
there was a flat stone that served as a kind of table, and for
nearly an hour I sat there. I didn’t do much besides eating a
few raisins. But I decided not to show this place to anyone else; I
would keep this place a secret.

It was a selfish thought,
but honest. Before I left, I remember bowing, at the same time
dipping my head, my hands drawn up in the universal attitude of
prayer. I didn’t do this out of some notion that the stones
might understand me. It just seemed the proper thing to do.

Charles Finn is a contributor to Writers on the
Range, a service of High Country News (hcn.org). He writes in
Stevensville, Montana.